Recording of broadcasts from television, radio or the Internet is a commonly desired function valued by most consumers. Many Consumer Electronic devices have been developed and sold for such a purpose. Since the introduction of Personal Video Recorders (PVR), such as the products from Tivo and ReplayTV, there has been a significant increase in consumer interest in such products. The associated terminology has also grown rapidly and equivalent devices are also termed Digital Video Recorders (DVR), Hard Disk Recorders (HDR) and Set-Top-Boxes (STB), where the latter is available both with and without storage.
In the common example of a Set-Top-Box, the device is generally capable of receiving analogue or digital broadcast signals and recording such signals on a hard disk drive. However, it is also possible to record programs received by a Set-Top-Box onto a tape or an optical disc, though an external storage device generally performs such recording. Generally, Set-Top-Boxes comprise a tuner and user interface used to select the program that should be recorded via a remote control. To keep the costs to the end consumer low, a typical Set-Top-Box has a limited number of resources. Examples of the limited resources are audio/video encoders, storage capacity, processing capacity and internal or external communication bandwidths. One further example of a limited resource is a tuner. Typically, tuners are provided that tune to a single channel within a traditional terrestrial electromagnetic wave transmission, a satellite transmission or a cable transmission. The limited resources often result in recording conflicts implying that a consumer is forced to decide which recordings should be made and sacrifice other programs. This is most often the case during prime time broadcast periods during which broadcasters take explicit decisions to broadcast popular programs at conflicting times with competing channels.
The increasing usage of recommender engines also has a large effect on the number of recording conflicts in Set-Top-Boxes, or equivalent devices, with limited resources. Recommender engines analyze a user's recording or viewing history to build up a profile and recommend programs that would be of interest to the user. Recommender engines can also automatically schedule recordings for a user, which again leads to recording conflicts on devices with limited resources.
A further development is the increasing use of computer technology within consumer devices, such as the use of computer networks to allow networks of consumer devices to be created. For example, a network of Set-Top-Boxes, often termed a network of peers, allows resources to be shared in a cost effective manner. In US 2005/0102698 A1, a system of Set-Top-Boxes is presented within which a Set-Top-Box assigns local resources to record programs for the user of the Set-Top-Box until the local resources are fully used. Thereafter, the Set-Top-Box contacts further peers within the network of peers to identify and use resources on the further peers. Whilst the sharing of resources within the network of peers can be beneficial in cases where the further peers have many resources available it has been found in practice that in many cases there are, in fact, no resources available on the further peers. The inventors recognizing this problem devised the present invention.